Re: Building collections at all

["B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2@yahoo.com>]

This reminds me of several conversations when we were building an 
academic library automated resource sharing system 30 years ago. 
A group of library directors was working with the Board of Higher 
Education to secure funds to improve interinstitutional document 
delivery.

One of the higher ed guys was an engineer with experience in 
designing inventory control systems. I remember one time when he 
suggested that when a book was requested by an institution the 
book should just stay at the borrowing institution because the 
borrowing transaction meant that someone there was interested in 
the topic.

Some of the other higher ed people were in favor of a real hard 
core cooperative collection development agreement where 
individual libraries collected only in designated core areas and 
relied on other libraries to fill in the gaps. These guys 
believed that the statewide "mega-collection" would be much 
richer if libraries spent less of their acquisitions dollars 
buying titles duplicated in other libraries.

They had a lot of ideas about how improved interinstitutional 
resource discovery and document delivery could change library 
operations. The ideas basically centered on not buying a given 
title on the off chance a local patron might use it, if you knew 
that title would be available from another library if/when 
needed. They were taking a fresh look at collection building, and 
I thought some of their ideas made good sense.

But most of the library directors came from backgrounds where the 
campus library was considered pretty much a "local" thing, and 
where collections were built "speculatively" just in case a local 
user might need the item. Some of the higher ed folks ideas made 
them nervous. They never really bought in.

Bernie Sloan